If you’re like most people, you read that title and scratched your head in confusion. “Rich,” you may have said, “what on earth are you talking about? Of course my birth certificate isn’t a bond. It’s a birth certificate.” And now you’re reading this, because you’re wondering what sort of foaming madness I’m spewing forth onto your screen.

I work in the financial sector in my day job, and I come into contact with a broad slice of the general public on a daily basis. That’s how I first encountered this nonsense. About six years ago, I received a call from a gentleman who said he wanted to redeem his bond. So I got the particulars of his account, looked it up, and scratched my head in confusion. There were no bonds. There weren’t any bond-based mutual funds. He had nothing that even looked like a bond. All he had was a checking account, and that held less than a hundred dollars.

“Sir,” I said, probably sounding extremely confused, “did you mean you wanted to take a withdrawal from your checking account?”

“No,” he assured me. “I’ve got a bond, and it’s worth a million dollars, and I just need to get enough out to buy a new car.”

/ read more…